The Games Children Play...

You Never See the Assassin...
Until he Smiles.
by
CDM.MMXI

"Children, children play at the things they’ve seen their elders do, for sport, for livelihood.  But the children of the damned play at damnation, Jean Luc.  That is what has come forward, just that, a compulsion to play at damnation..."



The quote is the heroine SQ St. Marie, speaking to her husband Jean Luc on the fateful night she reclaims her past, the past hidden from her waking memory for survival's sake.  By Sun or Moon is a work of fiction, a story of love, the healing power of love in support of a courage that will not be denied, an erotic story as the erotic should be.  It is a story of love and courage matched against the evils of abuse and rape, it is a story of an inner victory over those evils restoring life in full to the victim.  It is a story of the inner justice which in the end is the only justice which sets such horrors to peace.  But sadly, it is only a work of fiction, not all victims find their victory. 



These last weeks keeping the company of the young folk has brought to ever sharper focus what SQ said to her man about the children of the damned playing at damnation.  Among those I've conversed with are several who are serious gamers, who spend a significant amount of their time involved with the worlds and characters they create in the complex structures of the modern games.  These are not games as their elders knew games, these are deep fantasy worlds that reflect the gamer's perception of the world they see in their day to day lives, a perception they set into a game in order to deal with what their perception has inflicted upon their lives.  In all fact, the gamers I've been in contact with were among the most intelligent and sensitive of all. 



It is a terrible and indefensible condemnation of our culture, the things I see echoed into their games from their perceptions, their imaginations, of what they have come to believe life must be on an emotional level (if not a literal level perhaps easier to deal with from a standpoint of maintaining full humanity) based on what their world showed them as they passed through childhood.  I have only guesses as to what they saw, what may have happened to them, but I am very sure of one thing: they never saw the assassin until the assassin smiled to see their innocence fall bleeding at their feet.  The modern world of instant communication, the media of the modern world catering to the damned of the generation before, the modern world provides the assassin plenty of cover.  You'll not see him, until he smiles.